307 days to go and I can’t resist offering a preview of what we can expect. Namely the same tired old shit shouted over the sound of suicide bombers hitting the detonator (via McClatchy):

“This long-term struggle became urgent on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 . That day we clearly saw that dangers can gather far from our own shores and find us right there at home … So the United States made a decision: to hunt down the evil of terrorism and kill it where it grows [Unless it is growing in Saudi Arabia – ed.], to hold the supporters of terror to account [Account cannot be transfered to Saudi Arabia – ed.] and to confront regimes that harbor terrorists and threaten the peace [Confront = Kiss their cock rings if the regime is in Saudi Arabia – ed.],” Cheney said . “Understanding all the dangers of this new era, we have no intention of abandoning our friends or allowing this country of 170,000 square miles [Pay no attention to that oil beneath the soil! – ed.] to become a staging area for further attacks against Americans [They’ll have to make do with the 829,996 sq. mi to the south – ed.] .”

McClatchy deserves credit for running a bland headline on this story: “Cheney again links Iraq invasion to 9/11 attacks.” They must have at least toyed with the idea of running “That fat lying fuck is at it again,” and who can blame them, because Dick snarled out his version of events six days after McC broke this story:

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network.

[…]

The new study, entitled “Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents”, was essentially completed last year and has been undergoing what one U.S. intelligence official described as a “painful” declassification review.

It was produced by a federally-funded think tank, the Institute for Defense Analyses, under contract to the Norfolk, Va.-based U.S. Joint Forces Command.

Pentagon commissions a study. Study finds that there was no bin Laden/Hussein link. Cheney links Hussein with bin Laden.

This used to make me angry. Then it made me laugh. Now I have to wonder if Dick is trying to establish a viable insanity defense.